The 4.1 Setup

But these speakers are designed to be used in a 4.1 configuration and we should not forget this. My advice is to always use the 4.1 configuration even if your sound card can do only stereo. With the rear speakers properly placed you get a better surround effect. To simulate the surround you can use the StereoX2 mode or the ProLogic Mode. The Dolby Digital and Quad modes do not direct sound to the rear speakers.
I really liked at ADA890 the way how the system sounded in analog mode. There is a small difference between digital and analog, but in both situations the quality of the sound is very good. As I told you before in digital mode you get a better frequency coverage, but the bass is not so powerful.
When using a 4.1 configuration is the best to have a sound card capable of AC3 encoding. The sound quality in Dolby Digital is by far the biggest advantage of ADA890.

There are users which listen to music, others that watch DVDs and others that play games. The sound system performs different in all these situations, but we tried them all to see if there is a significant difference in quality. ADA890 rocks in MP3 and DVD playing, but the games effects may not be of the same quality with the music playing. We tested the system with a Sound Blaster Platinum sound card and there was a certain difference between the digital and the analog game playing. We preferred using the two front and rear analog outputs of the soundcard because the quality of the sound proved to be better than the one obtained with the digital output. It may be a sound card issue, but I don't think so. In digital mode the bass has to be adjusted to the maximum to get the same effects like with the analog inputs.

As the conclusion of the setup tests I recommend you a very good sound card, with a digital output and AC3 encoding. As I said you may experience in analog mode a richer bass response, but speakers provide an easy to use method for adjusting bass and treble so it's not a problem to make them suitable for your ears.

Overall the sound quality is good to very good, with small differences based on application. There are gaming systems on the market which do not cost so much and we do recommend them if you want 'only' to play games. But if you enter the DVD and quality music area there are no many competitors for ADA890, at least for the price and value.